It's All About Perspective

Remember when I talked about getting rid of my books? Most of them I posted on Amazon.com Marketplace while some I gave away to a local art studio trying to raise money (where I took my pottery class). Amazon was working out famously until some buyer decided my package didn’t arrive promptly enough. Very few people left comments on my seller account so one negative in four positive took my seller rating way down and sales stopped. (It wasn’t really my fault that the post office took so long, but I got to hear about it.) I decided to contact my local ebay store and see if they would be interested in selling the remaining books. The owner asked me to sort them by genre and then they would break the lots down into smaller groups that each had a value of about $75. When I received notice of the listings, all of my books had basically remained in the same large groupings I had dropped them off in, leaving me to wonder how well they were going to sell. Are people on ebay really looking to buy a large amount of books at one time?!

When the first batch sold I was initially really upset and disappointed but I have recently come to realize what a delight this is. My intent to sell my books wasn’t focused on the monetary gain I might acquire, but on ridding me of a possessive nature. I had received just as much pleasure from the boxes of books I had donated as I had from the individual books I had sold so why should it bother me that this lot of books sold for so little?

When I thought it through, I sat for a moment and saw it through the buyer’s eyes. Some woman, a book lover no doubt, went browsing through ebay one day and stumbled upon a selection of books that were being sold together as a lot. She put in the required minimum bid and thought she’d just ride the auction through and might be able to get a bargain. What she got was a set of 94 books, most of them like-new for $14.99. I can only imagine how excited I would be to have boxes of books arrive at my door that I had purchased for so little! What a joy!

I hope, wherever this woman is, she is as happy with the books and with her purchase as I am about giving them to her.

(As a note: by the time the ebay store takes out their commission, I will make about $11 on this deal. Considering most people sell their books at garage sales for a quarter a book and even then I’m sure not all of them would have sold, I’m really not out a huge sum of money. Either way, it’s a really fun perspective to see it from the other angle!)